Deeplinks Blog posts about File Sharing

News.com reports that Sen. Harry Reid has withdrawn a dangerous proposal that threatened to make universities do the entertainment industry's dirty work and use ineffective, burdensome copyright filtering tools on their networks. The Higher Education Reauthorization Act has now passed the Senate without that language. Thanks to everyone who took the time to call their Senators over the last day.

Major copyright holders are backing a legislative proposal [PDF] to make colleges do their dirty work. The Higher Education Reauthorization Act is supposed to make going to college more affordable, but, under a last-minute amendment, certain schools would risk losing federal funding for student aid if they don't divert funds away from education and toward policing corporate copyrighted content on their campus networks. Twenty-five schools will annually be singled out, required to police their students with "technology-based deterrents" (read: network surveillance technologies), and forced to provide evidence to the Secretary of Education about their efforts to stop file sharing.

After more than three years of litigation, a single mom who was improperly swept up in the RIAA's P2P litigation "driftnet" has finally been vindicated. An Oklahoma court has ordered the RIAA to pay nearly seventy thousand dollars in fees and costs to defendant Debra Foster. EFF, Public Citizen, the ACLU, and the American Association of Law Libraries filed an amicus brief in the case, supporting Foster's motion for fees.

Soon after the RIAA brought suit against Foster in 2004, it became clear that the the recording industry was pursuing the wrong person. But the RIAA not only refused to dismiss the case, it brought additional, unsupported claims of secondary infringement. Finally, two years after filing suit, the RIAA dropped the claims and attempted to walk away scot?free.

After suing media-hosting and social networking site iMeem for copyright infringement, Warner Music has now dropped its claims and licensed free streaming of its catalog in exchange for a cut of ad revenue. Though several other labels had already granted such licenses, Warner is the first major label to do so. We don't know the specifics of the deal, but it appears that users of the site can now keep sharing, playlisting, and listening to Warner songs, iMeem gets to keep providing innovative ways for them to do so, artists get paid -- and no one gets sued in the process.

Ars Technica reports that another innocent person has successfully stood up to the RIAA's misguided lawsuit campaign. Tanya Andersen, a disabled single mother who was sued in 2005 by the RIAA, went to court to fight the accusations. Forensic researchers were unable to find any trace of illegal downloading on her computer, and both parties have now agreed to a dismissal.

Andersen was essentially exonerated of any wrongdoing and can now ask the court to make the RIAA cover her attorneys' fees. Meanwhile, she has filed a countersuit against the record industry.